The Museum of Neon Art (MONA) is located in Grant Hope Park in downtown Los
Angeles.

MONA is the world's only art gallery featuring a permanent display of neon
art. It is a non-profit educational institution which holds and displays a
collection of sign boards and art works using neon as their medium. Works
by more than 400 artists are on show at the museum. The staff at MONA are
also involved in the planning of exhibitions held in art galleries and
institutions throughout the United States and Japan.

MONA was established by 1981 by two neon artists, Lily Lakich and Richard
Jenkins, in Little Tokyo, and later moved to a site next to Universal
Studios.

In response to our request for an interview, we were met by the artist Jan
Sanchez and MONA's Sophia Mannick, who has lived for some time in Japan.
The conversation was held in English with an occasional mixture of Japanese
and with interpretation provided by Mr. Itano, deputy chairman of the All
Japan Neon Sign Association.

Q: Neon signs and neon art in Los Angeles are endlessly fascinating. Do
you think that neon somehow fits the American character?

A: Americans like the fantastic neon signs that you see in Los Angeles but
they also greatly enjoy neon art. There are people with old-fashioned
ideas who react against new technology, but young people in particular get
on well with neon art. Lily Lakich, one of MONA's founders, is currently a
well-known neon artist, and her fateful encounter with neon signs came when
she was traveling from California to New York during her youth. The
experience made her fall in love with neon.

Neon art was presented for the first time in New York in 1958 and 1959,
marking the beginning of the neon art movement.

Q: You hold special workshops for children. How do children react?

A: We've been holding creative workshops ever since MONA was established.
Classes of between 15 and 20 people are held three or four times a year and
are attended every year by about 700 people. The participants watch videos
on how neon signs are produced and they create their own three-dimensional
designs using paper and other mediums. In ten years or so, we'll see the
emergence of real neon artists.

The classes held for adults are introductory courses which explain neon
design techniques in simple terms. The neon art which they design is
completed by experts who bend the tubes. Neon art courses are currently
available at many universities and are provoking a great deal of interest.

Q: How many neon artists are there active at the present time?

A: Works by 13 artists are on show at present. We change the display once
every three months so that works by between 60 and 70 artists can be
displayed during the year. There are between 100 and 200 neon artists
working throughout the United States. Almost all the works in the museum
are brought along by the artists themselves.

Q: How is MONA run?

A: MONA is supported by its system of membership, donations, and sales in
the museum shop. More than a thousand members bring along visitors from
both inside and outside the United States. The site of the museum is being
lent to us free by the Los Angeles city authorities for five years. The
upper part of this building consists of apartments, the idea being to
prevent any further outflow of population from the downtown area. We are
also contributing to the creation of a safe and attractive city as
redevelopment proceeds. The downtown area could hardly have been described
as attractive five years ago, and it wasn't safe either.

There are around fifty examples of neon art and signatures along Universal
City Walk, which is one of Los Angeles's major tourist attractions.
Carefully restoring the older items is a responsibility of MONA and the
Universal City Walk authorities.

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Neon signs are used effectively all over Los Angeles. The smaller neon
signs are particularly attractive and cute.

Along with the new neon signs, the types using old light bulbs can be seen in
perfect form along Universal City Walk. The light they emit is
astonishingly beautiful and they feature sophisticated designs. The famous
Mona Lisa neon remains on the site where Lily Lakich once had her studio.
The arcade thronging with tourists enjoying shopping offers a perfect blend
of neon signs and art and is in itself a kind of neon museum. These two
locations fully convey the power and the potential of neon.